Natalie Venetia Belcon Delivers an Incandescent ‘Paciencia y Fe’ in ‘In the Heights’ at New York City Center
David Buchanan
You can tell from her very first moments on stage that Natalie Venetia Belcon will deliver an endearing, strong performance in New York City Center’s gala presentation of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes’ musical In the Heights.
Yes, she has only a handful of lines in the show’s iconic opening number, in which Usnavi, a bodega owner from Washington Heights played with nebbish charm by Matte Martinez, introduces his beloved corner of New York City. But the actress arrives with such gravitas, and she carries it with her up to the second story of Riw Rakkulchon’s set, where she waters her flowerbed and looks lovingly on the assembling ensemble of characters below.
Director David Mendizábal’s utterly exuberant and polished production certainly does not lack for charismatic performers. Martinez, Jaci Calderon as Nina, Ashley De La Rosa as Vanessa, Ishmael Gonzalez as Sonny, and Aaron James McKenzie as Benny, amongst others, have all crafted three-dimensional characters during their brisk rehearsal period. Vocally, they excel with Miranda’s musical centerpieces, which continue to move as kinetically as one remembers (or imagined) they did in the 2008 original Broadway production, this time accompanied by music director Alejandro Senior, a thirteen member orchestra, and Mayte Natalio’s choreography.
But Belcon heightens our sense of this production as an event, which is fitting given how much Abuela Claudia serves as the focal point in the lives of the show’s young characters. There is also an innate sense of introspection that she brings to Claudia’s songs that serves as a necessary contrast to the magnetic energy of “No Me Diga,” “96,000,” “The Club,” “Carnaval del Barrio,” and other highlights of Miranda’s infectious, Tony Award-winning score.
Of course, Claudia’s extraordinary moment is “Paciencia y Fe,” which begins rousingly as Belcon exclaims “calor” six times, set against Tony Award winner Justin Townsend’s infernal red lighting. The performer and members of the ensemble – attired in period dress by Tony winner Dede Ayite — transport us back in time to 1940s La Vibora, Havana, Cuba, and narrate Claudia’s mother’s decision to leave for opportunity in the New York City. But as Claudia describes the hardships she and her mother experienced upon their arrival — “sharing double beds, trying to catch a break, struggling with English” — Belcon perfectly embodies that anguish: slightly hunched and gripping her stomach, her physicality registers just how much the memory of those days still takes her breath away. And when Claudia tearfully pulls out her winning lottery ticket sold at Usnavi’s bodega, the subject of the dynamic “96,000” earlier in Act 1, and asks her late mother simply, “What do I do,” I don’t believe I have ever heard New York City Center’s mainstage venue of 2,257 seats so pin-drop silent.
While “Paciencia y Fe” certainly stands alone, Belcon’s performance of the song also feels in conversation with her role in Buena Vista Social Club, for which she won the 2025 Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Musical, and to which she will return in December. There certainly exists a thematic resonance between the two shows and characters. In 1961 in Cuba, Omara Portuondo, the real Cuban singer and dancer whom Belcon portrays in Buena Vista, chooses to remain on the island even though her sister and singing partner Haydee immigrates to the United States; in In the Heights, Claudia comes to the states from Cuba in 1943, and the musical and the song, respectively, feature flashbacks and convey the grief of those who emigrated and those who stayed. Belcon intrinsically carries with her all of this history and her years of performances as Portuondo both off-Broadway and on Broadway while she inhabits Claudia, and she meaningfully marshals it all into a different but equally rich performance.
Ashley De La Rosa, who plays the brassy, determined Vanessa, also stars in Buena Vista Social Club as the younger version of Omara’s sister Haydee. In that musical, the two actresses share perhaps the most heart-wrenching scene: in the 1990s, while struggling with the decision of whether to perform on the album of classic Cuban songs that would become legendary, Omara returns to the abandoned Buena Vista Social Club where she and Haydee used to perform, and is greeted by the ghost of her sister, who convinces her to rediscover her singing voice. One cannot help but see that relationship refracted in Claudia and Vanessa’s in In the Heights, no matter how disparate their circumstances.
As Belcon does in all her performances, Claudia also bursts with joy. Her Act 2 duet with Martinez, in which Claudia and Usnavi decide what to do with her lottery winnings, is overabundantly sweet, though audience members who know what will soon follow will find it bittersweet instead. Two of the biggest laughs in the production come from Belcon, too: the first, in which Claudia pantomimes for Usnavi all the parts of her body she could have nipped and tucked with the amount of money she spends on her heart medications, and the second, the unscripted gasp that Claudia lets out when Mr. Rosario cuts his wife out of a significant financial decision because his name alone is on their company; her reaction gives the heavy scene an unexpected reprieve.
As with the majority of New York City Center’s productions—excepting the numerous Encores! mountings that have transferred to Broadway—In the Heights will conclude its run too quickly. That Belcon’s incandescent performance as Abuela Claudia will not be seen by an even wider audience speaks to the ephemeral nature of the theater, but her work In the Heights nevertheless demonstrates exactly why Belcon is one of our most compelling musical theater performers.
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